“We’d better not discuss it,” she said. But in these days of efficiency it seems a mistake that a woman who can drive an ambulance and can’t turn the heel of a stocking properly to save her life, should be knitting socks that any soldier with sense would use to clean his gun with, or to tie around a sore throat, but never to wear.
It was, I think, along in November that Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, came to see me. He had telephoned, and asked me to have Aggie there. So I called her up, and told her to buy some cigarettes on the way. I remember that she was very irritated when she arrived, although the very soul of gentleness usually.
She came in and slammed a small package onto my table.
“There!” she said. “And don’t ever ask me to do such a thing again. The man in the shop winked at me when I said they were not for myself.”
However, Aggie is never angry for any length of time, and a moment later she was remarking that Mr. Wiggins had always been a smoker, and that one of his workmen had blamed his fatal accident on the roof to smoke from his pipe getting into his eyes.
Shortly after that I was surprised to find her in tears.
“I was just thinking, Lizzie,” she said. “What if Mr. Wiggins had lived, and we had had a son, and he had decided to go and fight!”
She then broke down and sobbed violently, and it was some time before I could calm her. Even then it was not the fact that she had no son which calmed her.
“Of course I’m silly, Lizzie,” she said. “I’ll stop now. Because of course they don’t all get killed, or even wounded. He’d probably come out all right, and every one says the training is fine for them.”
Charlie Sands came in shortly after, and having kissed us both and tried on a night shirt I was making for the Red Cross, and having found the cookie jar in the pantry and brought it into my sitting room, sat down and came to business.